Archive for the ‘Goofing Around’ category

I like reality TV. The great thing about it is that the “plots” are so simple and repetitive that you don’t have to watch the show regularly or attentively to know whats going on. Since sitting still and I aren’t friends, reality TV shows are pretty much the only things I ever watch. They make good background noise when I’m making supper or eating.

I realized that I watch them a biiiiit too much when I started seeing the potential for reality TV concepts in WoW.

WoW Survivor

Starts off with two guilds of, say, 13 or 14 people. They each have their guild website and forums where we can follow their adventures. Guildies are welcome to be as dramatic as possible and even post video blogs on their forums.

About two times a week, the guilds compete against each other in a task. In the early weeks, the task could be getting a 10 man raid together and getting as far as possible (note that the guilds have 13 or 14 people…drama flag!), later on it could be challenges requiring less people.

The guild who looses the challenge must vote to /gkick a member. As the guilds shrink in size, they eventually merge (and we all know how that usually goes over!). The challenges become individual, with only one person gaining immunity to the /gkick. This goes on until there is a single WoW Survivor.

GuildMeister’s Ultimate Guild Takeover

Naughty healers? Cranky mages? Disobedient warlocks? Failed raids? You don’t have to put with that crap!

GuildMeister uses her skills and experience to turn your unruly guildie into top notch (or at least very polite) players. She teaches your guild to be disciplined, productive and to work together as a team. By coaching your GM, officers and members in fields like raiding, recruitment, communication and organization, she’ll turn your failing guild into the most successful group of people on your server.

But change doesn’t happen without some level of resistance! Drama, name calling and other childish behavior almost invariably ensue. Will GuildMeister succeed in giving guilds their much needed makeover? Tune in to her frapps log to see!

Also, if you enjoy GuildMeister’s adventures, but sure to check out the Guild Whisperer, the Guild Super Nanny and ‘Til Drama Do Us Part.

180 Active Members and Counting

In these days of small, tight knit guilds, managing even 30 members can be a handful. Yet the Dugguild has 180 active, happy members. They do all sorts of things together: raid races, hogger raids, guild parties, guild meetups. Even though they’re bursting at the seams, they never stop recruiting!

Want to see how they handle their huge, huge, huge guild? Check them out on their guild blog! With 180 motivated members, it gets updated quite frequently.

What Not to Wear, Gear Edition

Every week, our two WoW fashion experts surprise spell power wearing rogues or cloth wearing death knights (like my death knight!) at the moment they least expect it! The fashion offenders are then shown screen shots of their poor judgement in front of all their guildmates and friends.

Our experts take our challenged players to WoWhead, Elitist Jerks and MMO Champions where they teach them a few gearing rules. The players are then given 50 000 gold and 500 badges for purchasing new gear and enchants. After players are left to fumble around for a few hours on their own at the Auction House and Badge Vendor, our experts show up to help them finish the task.

Once their shopping is complete, players are brought to the Rotation and Not-Standing-In-Crap-Specialists who give them some extra tips to get the most out of their play.

After a whole week with the team of experts, players finally return to their guilds where their friends are waiting to admire their progress at a big raid party!

***

See! I think WoW is a perfect place to exploit drama for a profit educate players using real people and a loose plot. Of course, instead of weekly hour long TV shows, WoW Reality TV would be done using the internet, via message board interactions, blogs, You Tube Videos or all of the above combined! It’s a recipe for success!

Oh dear, another shared topic that’s out of my reach. Not because I’ve never played a melee DPS- I do go retribution once in a blue moon. It’s rather because every time I wave a two-hander around, my screen immediately looks like this:

Never fear, though, for through these extremely enriching and mind opening experiences, I have learned a thing or two about surviving in the PvE world as a (dead) melee DPS! When your face spends more time on the floor than staring at boss crotches, your beloved teammates begin to trample your dead self with insults and threats. You see the line “You have been removed from the group” more often than you read Chuck Norris, anal and gay bar jokes in trade chat. Your illustrious Guild/Raid/Melee DPS leader pulls you aside and explains that you must either learn to stay alive or leave the guild. Yes, it’s very difficult to survive PvE as a (dead) melee DPS. Fortunately, I know how to do it.

I’m excited to share with you today my take on Skip‘s Shared Topic suggestion. 5 Tips Surviving PvE as a (dead) Melee DPS is what I’ll call it. For more technical, more insightful and clearly less useful takes on the topic, I strongly urge you to check out the thread on Blog Azeroth.

Now down to business:

1- Get a “HEAL!!!!111one!” Macro

Sample of heal macros:

/s Heal!!
/y Heal!!
/g Heal!!
/p Heal!!
/ra Heal!!
/bg Heal!!

You can use one, several or, preferably, all of those lines in your heal macro.

Next, drag your macro down to your bars, or hotkey it, or mousebind it, however you happen to play the game. Just insert this macro into your regular rotation and all will be good. Every healer you encounter will thank you for it! There’s nothing healers appreciate more than being reminded that you exist and require heals.

2- Train Your Mind: Upon Dying, Your First Thought Should Always be “Who Can I Blame?”

This is an extremely important reflex. Your teammates, they are quick to yell at you the second your face hits the floor. They’ll blabber nonsense like “why can’t you get out of the fire?”, “control your aggro!”, “learn to play!” and a few lines that don’t meet the PG-13 rating of this blog. To get you started, here are some examples of people you can blame:

The Healer(s): Obviously they weren’t paying attention to your macro. Or to your health bar. When in doubt, blaming the healer(s) is a safe bet.

The Tank(s): If you suspect you were killed by a mob, then it must mean your tank(s) couldn’t carry aggro in a bucket! Quickly inform them of this. If you group with them again, be sure to call out “bucket check!” before the first (or every) pull.

The Last Person Who Was Targeted by a Boss Ability Before You Died: Another fair bet, the last person getting Legion Flamed or targeted by Orange Goo must not have reacted quickly enough and killed you. It’s important to call this out on vent, using the most accusatory tone you can muster. If your teammates do not believe you, just repeat yourself, speaking louder. They’ll believe you eventually.

The Raid/Party Leader: They didn’t tell you to move or stop attacking! They need to learn to communicate better. Inform them of this.

Blizzard: This fight is fundamentally discriminatory against ret paladins. It was designed for you to die and rack up a repair bill. So what if the other retribution paladin survived? They just got lucky with the RNG. Or they’ve got connections with Blizzard.

Your ISP/Computer: This is the lamest excuse, but when all else fails… There’s not a whole lot they can say when confronted with your enthusiasm for raiding but current difficult financial situation forbidding you from purchasing a new computer or switching to a reasonble ISP. Make sure you never let your guildmates know when you buy a new computer or they’ll suspect something. Lag lag lag lag. How you’ve gotten me out of trouble over and over and over again!

3- Heroics: Kick Them Before They Kick You

If you read blogs at all (and if you’re reading this, obviously you do), you know that kicking is common practice in random heroics. Heck, if you’re a melee DPS who dies often, you’ve likely experienced this firsthand. A lot. Therefore, it’s important to watch that little “dungeon finder” debuff. As soon as it runs out, vote to kick whoever seems like they’d be the most problematic. That mage who does too much DPS. The snarky healer who expects you to eat after a rez. If everyone is silent in the group, vote to kick whoever happens to have the highest gear score. (Note: Gearscore is an absolutely essential addon when it comes to survival as a dead melee DPS.) Gear with the green “heroic” label on them also warrants an insta-kick.

4- Run a Lot of Heroics to Get Your GS Up

As mentioned in my last point, if you’re to survive as a dead melee DPS, you need to get the Gearscore (GS) addon. Then, just chain heroic after heroic. As you accumulate badges, purchase T9, T10 and other gear from the vendors. Don’t worry about spreadsheets or potential DPS or whatever. You’re dead all the time, so who cares about that? You can even buy offspec gear if you feel like it. The point is to get the highest ilvl gear possible.

Once your GS is close to or above 5k, advertise it in trade chat. 5.3k GS pally LF good group daily random! At the beginning of each instance, be sure to point out everyone’s GS, especially if its lower than yours. If anyone criticizes you for dying, point out that you have 5k GS and are clearly amazing.

5- Talk. Constantly. I mean, Constantly.

It has been brought to my attention that chatty rogues are not a phenomenon exclusive to my guild. In fact, they are fairly common. Why? Because, rogues, in their squishy, squishy leather, die all the time and have learned to attract attention elsewhere. Your death will be completely forgotten if the raid is suddenly busy listening to you argue with the rogues over set bonuses. Or criticizing the positioning on the current boss. Or rambling about whether Sunday night is a good time for an alt run. Or sharing who would win if Taylor Swift and Beyoncé got into a jello wrestling match.

And there you go. Armed with this information, you are now fit to survive in the harsh, cruel world of PvE as a (dead) melee DPS! All thank you messages can be directed with donations to my (imaginary) paypal account.

It’s story time! There can never be too many PuG tales. Every time we think we’ve seen and heard it all, something unthinkable happens and the world must be informed.

I had my epeen sliced and diced and put in the blender yesterday. And I liked it. It was a Pit of Saron random group. (Why do I feel like saying that implies it’ll be a great story?) We had a warrior, we had a shadow priest, we had a rogue and we had a hunter. I assumed the warrior was tanking, but I checked everyone’s health to make sure. Ok, yes, he has the most. Not by much, but it should be enough. Thats the furthest I go. I don’t do gearscore and I don’t manually inspect. In a PuG, I figure I’m stuck with these people for better or for worse. Judging them as we zone in does more harm than good.

We buff, we pull. The rogue insta-dies. The trash goes down ok, not too much damage, looks like it’ll be a decent run.

We clear to the first boss. We pull him. The rogue insta-dies. Seems like we’re taking more damage than usual, but it’s ok, I like some exercise. Oooops, the Spriest has aggro! Quick! Hand of Protection! Ouf! I better salv her, just in case. How’s the hunter doing for aggro? Seems to be ok. Where’s his pet? Oh. At his feet. Well, at least auto-shot seems to working. It was a rough go, it lasted awhile, but we got him down. I still have most of my mana. Not bad, not bad.

Clear some more trash, then time for Krick and Ick! We pull. The rogue insta-dies. The hunter auto-shoots, his pet at his feet. It was a long fight, but it’s ok, I’m always complaining that fights are too short anyway.

Now for the tricky trash part! We pull. The rogue insta-dies. Mobs are flying everywhere! No danger of the hunter or the pet as his feet pulling aggro, but the poor shadow priest carrying us… Hand of Protection! Hand of Salv! Oh dear, oh dear. OMG somehow the hunter is almost dead! Eeeek! Good thing I timed that big heal well! Crap! I’m being attacked all over. Um. Um. Holy Wrath! Bubble Sac! Oh no! Oh no! The priest! Aaaaah the tank! Curse beacon falling off! Aaaaaah!!!! Holy Lights were spammed all over the place, I was on the edge of my seat. I must keep my team alive! I must, I must! Healing Anub’arak 10 on hard mode is cake compared to this!

Slowly the damage lessened. Despite clever use of Divine Plea and Divine Illumination, I was almost completely drained of mana. I was sweaty and shaking. And, oh!, how I was feeling smug. “God, I’m awesome.” I thought to myself. “I can’t believe I just healed through that. I love me.” Surely, they will compliment me on this incredible feat of strength!

Fat chance! I used the rest of my juice to rez the rogue and I sat down to drink. “Mana!” I called out.

“Mana shmana,” thought the tank, who ran ahead to pull the next group.

There was no point in even getting up. There’s no way I would have time to reach him. Besides, it’s not like I had any mana to use on him anyway. I exhaled, closed my eyes and let death take me.

“Attack the bone guy next time” ordered the tank.

I rolled my eyes. “Wait for the healer next time.”

I expected an apology, but, yeah, I have really unreasonable expectations. And I think healer text is only visible to other healers anyway. The tank completely ignored me.

When I’m done, we get into position. We pull. The rogue insta-dies. The tank gets two-shotted. Legit wipe. I admit defeat and ask for a shackle this time. Luckily the shadow priest must be a part time healer because she completely got the message and made excellent use of her shackle. The rogue insta-died a few more times with following pulls, but we reached the cave.

The cave was…like…nothing I had ever experienced before. We ran in. The rogue insta-died. The ground was littered in blue runes. The poor hunter with his pet at his feet. He must have been tossed around by every single piece of falling snow. But unless they get one-shotted, I don’t abandon my teammates. I kept him alive each time! As I’m running and dodging, casting any heals I could get out, I see the poor shadow priest almost dying. Nooooo! Hand of Protection! Uh oh, the mobs are coming for me now! Um. Um. Um. Holy wrath! Bubble sac! I vaguely wonder why the tank isn’t tanking any damage… I shrug and place my beacon on the shadow priest instead.

For what seemed like an eternity, I did everything right. I used Lay on Hands at the right moment. I kept Hand of Protection and Hand of Salv on cooldown. Whenever my greater heals were interrupted by the dozens of zombies eating me, I cast Holy Wrath and ran to the tank. I used every trick in the book to avoid running out of mana. Going by how many times I cast Hand of Protection, the fight lasted at the very least 6 minutes. 6 minutes of intensity. 6 minutes of deep focus. 6 minutes of spamming Holy Light between running. 6 minutes of having my face eaten by ghouls. I kept all 4 of us alive, using every trick in the book.

By the time we reached the end of the cave and the shadow priest had cleared the trash, my epeen had become the longest epeen in epeen history. Surely, they will thank me now! They will congratulate me! They will wonder how I managed this awesomeness! They will write songs in my honour!

The tank turned to me and spoke in party chat. Excited to receive approval, I turned to read it. What followed was the most extreme epeen crushing I had ever experienced, yet, at the same time, it completely made my day.

I try to keep away from non-WoW posts. But I wrote this today during some downtime on my trip home and I’m rather fond of it. There are a handful of topics that I’ll happily ramble on about for days and travel adventures are one of them. I don’t have a personal blog and still wanted to share, so I decided to post it here. Most of this actually happened. It was a pretty crazy trip, the usual 5 hours turned into 12, and I’m really happy to be home.

(c)2009 Google - Map data (c)2009 Google, Tele Atlas

There is more than just part of an ocean separating Newfoundland from the Canadian mainland. Even ignoring cultural boundaries, there are times when I realize I’m a long way from home. These times usually tend to be whenever I have to fly in to, or out of, the island. My whole life, when I’ve wanted to go to somewhere, I could conveniently hop on a bus or a plane. I could be anywhere in a matter of hours. Not so on “the rock”.

We all know the arrogant bastard. The big mouthed guy (or girl) who puts down others, genuinely thinks they’re better/smarter/more useful/prettier/better in the kitchen than they really are. The person that make Type B personalities politely smile and look away and that make Type A personalities blow a gasket. We come across them all the time in the offline world as well as in WoW. Bloggers of all types feed their readers with lovely tales of the arrogant bastard.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, is the insecure nervewreck. Due to the insecure nervewrecks’ quiet demeanor, he (or she) is not noticed as much. Subtle signs of mild insecure nervewreckness may include over apologizing, slow typing due to erasing and retyping multiple times and making really stupid, obvious mistakes. Still not sure what I mean? Lets have some examples!

Those classes in grade school where we sat in circles and talked about our problems came to mind. You know, the ones where the teacher would tell us how important it was to talk about our feelings. “Talking about the things that bother us makes us feel better”, she would say. So I thought about it.

Me: I wonder if I told people exactly how nervous I get, I would feel better.
Myself: No wai! They would think you’re crazy, you’re a drama whore and no one will want to be around you.
Me: :(
Me: …
Me: What if I blogged about it?
Myself: Blogging about it is fine.

Oh, but I still die a bit inside whenever I get a spike in traffic. I’m pleased that some people appreciate my lose screws but it’s like everyone staring at you while you’re naked. Maybe I’m half exhibitionist?